In 2005, Genarlow Wilson was found guilty of having oral sex with an underage girl at a 2003 New Year’s Eve party, when he was 17. He has since served 28 months in prison for aggravated child molestation, a crime carrying a 10-year minimum sentence.

The sentence is particularly contentious, because under Georgia State law if Wilson had engaged in penetrative sex with the girl, the maximum sentence would have been 12 months.

The law has now changed, so that were Wilson sentenced for the same crime now, he could serve no more than one year. But that amendment was not retroactive.

In the light of that legal development, Wilson’s attorney argued that the 10-year sentence amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. A judge concurred on June 11, ruling that Wilson’s conviction should be reduced to a misdemeanor. But Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker has appealed the ruling.

Wilson remains in jail. The case will now go to the state Supreme Court.

Wilson and five other defendants were originally indicted when a 17-year-old girl accused them of raping her. All six men were acquitted of rape, but the investigation unearthed a video of Wilson having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Wilson’s sentence is “unconstitutional” as it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, argued his attorney B. J. Bernstein, filing an appeal on June 11, 2007. The presiding judge ruled that the sentence be reduced to one year and Wilson’s name be removed from the sex offenders’ register. That ruling was then overturned by the Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker.

Of the six men originally indicted, Wilson was both the only one to refuse a plea bargain and the sole defendant without a criminal record. The jurors took less than an hour to find the defendants not guilty of rape, and ABC News reports that more than one of them were unhappy with being forced by the law to find Wilson guilty of child molestation. This article dating from February 2006 covers the trial and the subsequent campaign to change the law.

The “Romeo and Juliet” clause protects teenagers who have consensual sex from being tried as child molesters when there is less than three years difference in their ages. At the time this article appeared on BlackAmericaWeb.com, Wilson’s attorney was campaigning for the terms of that clause to be expanded to cover oral sex.

Wilson was on the verge a college career that, thanks to his skills on the football field, could have taken him to one of the top U.S. colleges. However, he was arrested on the day of his SAT. Once charged, he refused a plea bargain that would have meant being labeled as a child molester, a designation that would have prevented him from returning to his family home and to life with his little sister. This ESPN story looks at how Wilson and his family have been affected by his conviction.

Michelle, the 17-year-old woman in the Wilson case, woke the morning after that fateful New Year’s Eve party wearing only her socks. When her mother picked her up, she wreaked of beer and marijuana. At home, she broke down and told her mother, “I think they raped me.” That accusation, refuted by the jury, indirectly led to Wilson’s conviction on charges of child molestation.

The New York Times portrays Wilson as a bookworm waiting eagerly for the next Harry Potter installment. The writer of this article is adamant that Wilson should be freed, so that he “can return to his family and his once promising academic career.”

Another Times piece protests Wilson’s sentence. The author reserves particular disapproval for state prosecutor David McDade. In May 2007, McDade appeared on television and said that Wilson was one of six men who “basically gang-raped a 17-year-old,” a charge for which Wilson was acquitted in 2005.

Former President Jimmy Carter is among Wilson’s prominent supporters, reports New York Post writer Leonard Greene. The Post columnist takes up the jailed youth’s cause, arguing that in this instance the “law perverts justice.”

“The Child Protection Act of 1995” is the legislation under which Wilson was sentenced. Matt Tower, a former Georgia representative, authored that bill, but has publicly spoken out in defense of Wilson. “It was never, ever the law’s intention to lock up young people for 10 years for consensual sex,” writes Tower.

A high school student with a 3.2 GPA, Genarlow Wilson was arrested on the day he was to sit for the SAT, according to his appeal Web site. The law changed after his conviction, and were he to be sentenced today, he could not serve more than 12 months in prison. This site provides an online petition for those who want to express their support for Wilson.

Thurbert E. Baker blocked the ruling that overturned Wilson's conviction on child molestation. Baker has a reputation for being tough on crime, according to his Web site. He is also an African-American, a fact that a number of news sites have felt it important to mention.

Baker has no fear of bruising the sensibilities of black activists in his vigorous determination to follow the law to the letter, according to this Associated Press article on his involvement in the Wilson case.

Marcus Dixon served 15 months in a Georgia jail after being convicted of having sex with a girl 3 months shy of 16 when he was 18 years old. The case shares several similarities with Genarlow Wilson’s. One difference, however, is that the Dixon incident involved a black man and a white girl, whereas both parties were black in the Wilson case. Though Dixon was originally sentenced to 10 years in prison, an appeal saw him released in May 2004.

Georgia was “second only to Mississippi in lynching,” writes this Washington Post writer, implying a racial motivation behind the conviction of Marcus Dixon. Once upon a time, writes the Post, the accusations against these men “would be cause for a mob. And the jail cell holding the accused would just happen to be left unlocked that night.”

The girl in the Dixon case maintained she never gave her consent, and a medical examination concluded that her injuries were consistent with, though not conclusive evidence of, forced penetration. In addition, the girl’s family successfully sued her high school for negligence in not responding to previous sex offenses committed by Dixon. However, jurors in his case complained that they never intended Dixon to be so severely punished.